Commenting OutOfOrder:

how easy it would be to detect who is visiting the page

Setting up simple login will give you the REMOTE_USER ENV upon login. Getting them in your perl code is as simple as checking the $ENV{REMOTE_USER} upon successful login. Setting up your web server to prompt for, say, Basic Authentification is going to be something you'll want to look up, since it's very server-dependent.

a good reason to use Perl rather than a simple Wiki page, would be that the program would generate timestamps rather than having the user have to enter the date on which the data access was last checked.

Any decent Wiki backend can be setup to add a timestamp for every entry on a page; many allow you to do Version Control, as well, which would auto-timestamp each change.

So far as your overall idea, it looks good.

How many services are we talking about? Is it a set number for all users, or does it vary?

If its is set then maybe the display looks like

Name    | Date    | Service1 | Service 2 | Service 3
Fred     05-06-06  PASS       PASS        PASS
George   05-16-06  PASS       PASS        PASS
Fred     05-06-06  PASS       FAIL        PASS
[download]

If there are multiple data sources, then maybe one table per data source is in order

Service1
Name    | Date    | PASS
Fred     05-06-06  PASS 
Fred     05-07-06  FAIL
George   04-05-05  PASS
[download]

or

Name    | Date    | SERVICE | PASS
Fred     05-06-06   Service1  PASS 
Fred     05-06-06   Service2  PASS 
Fred     05-07-06   Service2  FAIL
Dale     05-06-06   Service2  PASS
[download]

It all realy depends on the number of services and what you are looking for when glancing at the report. That aside I think a kind of wizard interface would be cool. First page you enter your credentials, then based on the credentials it provides you with a page for each service. Perhaps those pages even have refresher directions on accessing the specific data source, and two giant buttons PASS and FAIL. Last page takes you to the report and reminds you of the next time you need to verify your data access.

Hey eric, thanks for your response.

There are multiple data sources, and some data sources are only used by one person, and others are used by all, and everything in between. So I'd like the page to be organized by user.

The total number of services is about say 15 or 20 or so. I have to run now, but will post more later.

_________________________________________________________________________________
Without me, it's just aweso

I am thinking of what type of back-end to use for this. I suppose the simplest case would be a delimited text file of the form

user1,service1,date1,pass
user1,service2,date2,pass
user1,service3,date3,fail
user2,service1,date4,pass
...

an alternative would be XML, but that seems like overkill, and frankly I am not too comfortable with it, though I used it for a similar application before, more as a learning exercise than anything else.

Thoughts?

TIA, T.

#!/opt/local/bin/perl
#
# Script to keep track of peoples' access to their data sources
#
#
#
sub showparams{
  foreach $a (param()){
    $b=param($a);
    print "param $a has value :$b: <br>";
  }
}
BEGIN {
    use CGI qw/:standard *table/;
    use Text::CSV::Simple;
    $datafile='/dma/lib/www/fst/datachecklist/dataaccess.txt';
    my $parser = Text::CSV::Simple->new;
    my @data = $parser->read_file($datafile);
    print header();
    if (!param('editbutton')){
      @now=localtime;
      #month returned by localtime() are zero-indexed.
      #got to pad the zeroes for the time/date elements
      $timestamp=sprintf("%02d-%02d-%04d",$now[4]+1,$now[3],$now[5]+19
+00);
      @params=param();
      unless (param('Cancel')){
    foreach $d (@params){
        if ($d =~ /-/){
          @param1=split(/-/,$d);
          if ($d =~ /Add/){
        unless (param('New service') eq ""){push(@data,[$param1[0],par
+am('New service')]);}
        sub servicesort { $a->[0] cmp $b->[0] }
        @data=sort servicesort @data;
          }else{
        foreach $c (@data){
          if ($c->[0] eq $param1[0]){
            if ($c->[1] eq $param1[1]){
              $c->[2]=$timestamp;
              $c->[3]=$param1[2];
            }
          }
        }
          }
      }
        }
      }
      open(FH,">$datafile") || die "Couldn't open datafile: $!";
      foreach $g (@data){
      print FH join(',', @$g), "\n";
      }
      close(FH);
      print start_html( -title => "Data Access", -bgcolor => 'purple' 
+);
      print start_form();
      showparams();
      print h6({-align=>'right'},"Today is $timestamp");
      my $lastuser;
      $lastuser="";
      foreach $i (@data){
    if ($i->[0] ne $lastuser){
      print end_table();
      print br(),table({-width=>'33%'},Tr(th({-align=>'left'},[$i->[0]
+,submit('editbutton',"edit  $i->[0]")]))), br();
      print start_table({-width=>'33%',-cellpadding=>2,-cellspacing=>0
+,-border=>2,-frame=>'box'});
      print Tr(th(['Data Source','Date Last Checked','Check Result']))
+;
    }
    print Tr(td($i->[1]),td($i->[2]),td($i->[3]));
    $lastuser=$i->[0];
      }
      print end_table();
    print "\n";
    }
    else{
      $user=substr(param('editbutton'),6);
      print start_html( -title =>"Edit $user", -bgcolor => 'purple' );
      print start_form();
      showparams();
      print h2($user);
      print start_table({-cellpadding=>2,-cellspacing=>0,-border=>2,-f
+rame=>'box'});
      print Tr(th(['Data Source','Date Last Checked','Last Check Resul
+t','Report Success','Report Failure']));
      foreach $i (@data){
    if (@$i[0] eq $user){      
      print Tr(td($i->[1]),td($i->[2]),td($i->[3]),td(submit("$user-$i
+->[1]-Pass","Report Success")),td(submit("$user-$i->[1]-Fail","Report
+ Failure")));
    }
      }
      print end_table();
      print textfield(-name=>'New service'),submit("$user-Addbutton",'
+Add new service'),br();
      print submit('cancel','Cancel');
      }
      print end_form();
      print end_html();
}
[download]

Any and all comments appreciated. T.

To show what a Perl newbie I am, the thing I "cooked up" to write back to the file was a simple join(). DOH!

Step 2 would be adding a final field in the csv file that is simply either a 1 or a 0, and turning on email updates (and adding a button for toggling of email updates to the "Edit User" page. Will take a bit of work to turn the names into email addresses though.

Any thoughts?